Picture Book of the Month: T is for Terrible

This month's picture book is T is for Terrible by Peter McCarty. This book is breathtaking, it is such a sweet book, a book that has a soul. I loved this book ever since I first laid eyes on it. The colors are lovely and, in the words of my niece, the book makes one feel "calm" and it seems as if it is going to rain, as if there is a cloudy, calm feeling all throughtout the book.


The dinosaur in the book, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, is a good-hearted dinosaur who realizes that he is known to be a "terrible lizard." He ponders what it would be like to be different, and why he is not different. The book has just enough wording and the illustrations are perfect. At one point there are no words, but no words are needed. The feeling that this book evokes is absolutely amazing. I highly recommend this book. It will cause you to feel, to cry a little bit for the dinosaur. That is how powerful the words and the pictures in this book are.

If you don't have it in your library, get it now! If you don't have it in your house, also get it now! What are you waiting for? Get it now!!!

Elegy for Librarians

Elegy for librarians: After all the budget cutting's done, who'll be around to help us ask the sharper questions?





If librarians seem distracted these days, you can't blame them. They're worried that they'll lose jobs. As cities, counties, public schools and universities all grapple with recessionary budget cuts, libraries look like low-hanging fruit. In this iEverything age, the thinking goes, books are musty relics. And without books, who needs librarians?



The truth is that we've never needed them more. Every day in this city, librarians do important jobs not strictly related to library science.



They teach senior citizens to use e-mail and show job seekers how to fill out on-line forms. They help middle-schoolers with math homework and urge high-schoolers not to trust everything they read on Wikipedia. They reserve rooms for community meetings. They set up displays. They arrange reading series. They keep cranky microfiche readers running. They read aloud to toddlers.



But as valuable as all those things are, what we need most right now is for librarians to do their core jobs: to serve as information professionals, a job that's harder now than ever before.



The infoverse has exploded. Data still comes in book form — and also in a bazillion other forms as well: among them, databases, online journals, architectural plans, maps, photos, microprints, CDs, DVDs, podcasts, posters, manuscripts, Tweets, musical scores, scripts, magazines, software and web sites.



Librarians make it possible to navigate wilderness.



They do the brute-force work of organization: bar-coding new acquisitions; putting books back on the right shelves; scanning and digitizing paper holdings; entering items into databases, where a search can reveal them.



Handed a difficult question, a good librarian happily hacks through the data jungle, sorting the good info from the bad, and procuring exactly the answer you wanted.



But great librarians do something even better: They help you ask a sharper question, then find the answer you didn't know you needed.



Maybe printed books will largely disappear in the next decade. But even so, we'll still need libraries - because we'll need librarians.

[Source]

Bilingual Resources for Children

Through my searches I've found a few really good bilingual resources.

The Utah State Library has some really nice bilingual story time scripts available on their website. And the Lititz Public Library has a really good powerpoint titled Bilingual Storytime for Beginners.

Last but certainly not least, I came across a wonderful blog titled El Perro en la Luna (The Dog on the Moon) that has the most wonderful reviews of Spanish Children's books. I've never come across a website quite like this one, and I highly recommend it. Most of the books I have never come across but look very interesting, and some I have heard of and loved (like Little Beauty by Anthony Browne, known in Spanish as Cosita Linda). I highly recommend this blog and will be visiting it often.

Picture Book of the Month: It's a Book

Lately I've become a big fan of the work of Lane Smith, in particular of two picture books by Smith: John, Paul, George, & Ben (2006) and It's a Book (2010). The picture book for this month is It's a Book, a clever and witty story about a monkey, a mouse, and a jackass who are sitting together while going about their business. The monkey and the mouse are occupied with a book, while the jackass is busy typing away on his computer.

He constantly bugs the monkey, asking him whether his book can "text, blog, scroll, wi-fi, or tweet." The book is simply charming, the ending is unexpected, and all the small details are very nice to notice (such as the types of fonts used for each of the characters). This book is a must to check out, and if you become a fan of it, which I'm sure you will, keep a look out for It's a Little Book, coming out this October.

Who Knew? Banned Books

The Uncommon Reader

One day while shelving books, I spotted a small thin red book and I grabbed it. It was titled The Uncommon Reader and written by Alan Bennett. I thought the cover looked very nice - it features a silhouette of a woman reading a book with a crown on her head - a silhouette of the Queen of England. She is reading very politely too, with her pinky held slightly away from the rest of her fingers.

The plot does center around the Queen of England. She one day stumbles upon a mobile library and borrows a book out of politeness. That sets off an appreciation and newfound love for reading, one that is not too welcome by other members of the staff, including the Queen's private secretary. Her love of reading grows but not everyone appreciates it, but she does manage to get across to some people, including the public. Towards the end of the story, the Queen realizes that reading will only take her so far - it is time for her to take the next step - to write.

It was at this point that I realized that the Queen's problem is my problem. There are so many books that I have that I want to read, more now that I just went to the annual book sale we go to. At the same time, I want to write, to write a book, a story, but because I spend so much time reading, I sometimes don't have time. I think I should follow the Queen's example and spend a bit more time writing now that I actually do have the time.

At the end of the story, the Queen announces her idea to write, and many of her staff and previous prime ministers are against it; the prime minister at the current time is worried that her book will reveal things (probably about him and others) that will be embarrassing to him, so he reminds the Queen that she must abdicate to write the book she is thinking about writing. She then asks them all, "Why do you think you are all here?" And like that, the story ends.

I really enjoyed this story. The writing was nice and calming and witty in many places. I loved the theme of reading and I love history, such as British History, so reading a story about The Queen was interesting to me. Something else I loved about the book was that Charles Dickens was mentioned at least three times. There were a few minor things that I didn't find too funny, but for the most part the book was a lovely read.

Zombie in the Library

The man wears dark sunglasses.

Adam recognizes him. It is the same man from his mother's favorite movie.

It is the Librarian.

- Return to the Library of Doom: Zombie in the Library, Michael Dahl and Bradford Kendall